Data is universally accepted as a key asset for enterprises today, and the adoption of the right data ecosystem and processes can be a tremendous boon to company prospects. A company absolutely must be aware of what the data marketplace is making possible and, with discernment, actively engage the process of adoption. At all times, enterprise data maturity is either going up or down. Momentum up the model is essential for success but keep in mind the model will evolve over time. No plateaus are comfortable for long.
Unless you’re a 5 out of 5 across the board, you need to continue your journey by delivering business wins utilizing higher-level elements of maturity, and thereby increasing your data maturity. You must deliver business wins while you improve data maturity.
Each level of data maturity corresponds to not only increased data maturity but also increased organizational maturity and bottom-line ROI. With a maturity model, enterprises can self-assess data capabilities in organization, technology, architecture, and processes categories, yielding an overall view of the current level of data maturity. This is highly impactful on next steps.
The Data Maturity Assessment and Improvement service will benchmark your capabilities, identify strengths and gaps, and provide insight to achieve actionable improvements, both strategic and tactical, to your data management program.
We provide an actionable plan that defines next steps for the program, not just a current score.
We will assess the data maturity of your data management and align recommendations to increasing this maturity. The data & analytics capability model we use is based on the MCG Data Program Maturity Model™. An assessment of data & analytics capabilities will be conducted to determine the current maturity in key process areas:
Organization: For the organization category, you will want to have data governance encompass the entire enterprise -- all domains, all departments, all systems. This should be pervasive in the enterprise culture and a touchstone for all decisions. Effective data governance is an enabler for improving data maturity.
Technology: So much data technology is required to be put to work in an enterprise today, and so much of it revolves around enabling an organization to be an artificial intelligence leader. To that end, databases at the edge in IoT architectures, embedded databases, pervasive master data management, and self-describing data are evident in highly mature organizations in 2021.
Architecture: Sensible allocation of workloads to platforms is a requirement. At the least, this means data warehouse, data lake and master data management platforms are present, operating, and mature. Data integration between platforms should be automated, real-time streaming.
Processes: This is a big challenge for many as it involves people more than any other category. Highly mature organizations ensure all development is done with “loose fitting” but a nonetheless present set of development guidelines. Also, in mature organizations, data is understood by the executives to be a strong asset, with there even being the occasional reference to data in financial disclosure statements.
The assessment results will highlight strengths and weaknesses and provide a framework for key findings and recommendations on opportunities to improve. Each of the assessed process areas will be specifically scored against a five-level capability model introduced by work at Carnegie Mellon, and applied to Data Management by industry models developed by McKnight Consulting Group. We present the results and propose actionable recommendations that can assist you in planning and prioritizing improvements, reflective of the major initiatives now underway and business needs.
The report will provide the assessment capability level ratings from workshops and artifact review, providing a detailed snapshot of current data management capabilities. It also identifies gaps and provides suggestions for improvements, and highlights strengths. Finally, it synthesizes next step recommendations and key quick wins to benefit the organization’s data management program.
The Data Maturity Assessment and Improvement service provides a foundation for enhancing current capabilities, increasing business stakeholder engagement, and updating the strategy and sequence plan for achievement of improved data management maturity, aligned with major initiatives.